Photos of Syncretic Temple on Malaysian Coast

About 100 km south of Taiping is a famous Temple situated on the West Malaysian coast, which houses some remarkable statues.

As with many of the originally Taoist temples in Malaysia this one is now a syncretic temple, which worships bodhisattvas as well as Taoist gods.

The Temple was originally founded for the specifically Malaysian-Chinese God Tua Pek Kong (whose interesting history is given in the notes on the album page).

Later, after the visit by some Mahāyāna monks, there was a miraculous happening, and Tua Pek Kong told the keepers of the Temple to also open a shrine to Kuan Yin.

The Temple is now a large and growing theme park, with many statues imported from China, including the main 48 ft tall sitting Tua Pek Kong statue.

The park has many different statues erected, including the 18 Arahants, the 4 Great Kings, the Queen of Heaven, the 12 zodiacal signs and the Dragon King and his Entourage. This is besides the Temple itself, with its many shrines.

As the rains blew in over the coast while I was there I missed photographing some of the statues, like Xuanzang and his companions, and the filial piety stories, which I will have to photograph at another time.

For now there is more than enough to make up an interesting collection of more than 100 photographs, and this is the first album I have managed to publish on my Photo Dharma website since returning to Malaysia in October.

As always the photos are published in three sizes: thumb for quick viewing, medium size for the slideshows and original size for reuse. At the bottom of the page, I also give some background information on Malaysia, its gods and their syncreticism, and excerpts from an informative brochure relating the history of the Temple.